methane

Methane in the Arctic: The end of the world, or what?

Russian scientists have discovered that the Arctic is releasing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of enormous plumes of methane from the seafloor directly into earth's atmosphere. The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern […]

Critical List: Canada out of Kyoto; the Napsack should be on your Christmas list

Canada is officially out of Kyoto, because it has no chance of meeting its targets and doesn't want to pay the fines. A Russian research team has found plumes of methane bubbling out of the Arctic Ocean. But maybe we should chill out about it, because methane's not as horrible as carbon dioxide? The EPA […]

Australians to kill camels for carbon credits

Australians really don't like the hundreds of thousands of feral camels that run around the continent, so every once in a while the government decides to spend money on sending guys with guns up in helicopters to cull their numbers. But now they have a utilitarian justification for the culls: They're fighting climate change.

Like cows, camels spew methane from their digestives systems. By cutting their lives short, one company argues, Australia would be preventing the release of the methane the camels would emit over their remaining years. The company, Northwest Carbon, also says it'll be able to offer carbon credits for the reduction in emissions.

Critical List: Canada’s pushing tar-sands oil; cutting methane also helps cut climate change

In 110 meetings over less than two years, the Canadian government tried to convince Europe to delay or derail legislative changes that could affect the imports of tar sands oil. Basically, Canada doesn’t want Europe to know how carbon-heavy the oil is, because that could affect U.S. and European imports. So they’re pushing it as environmentally friendly. Because hey, if you don’t know how dirty something is, maybe it’s clean!

We often talk about cutting carbon, but here's a reminder that cutting gases like methane and nitrous oxide can also slow climate change.

The EPA found that, left to their own devices, companies don't tell consumers that their processes release or their products contain chemicals harmful to children.

Where do greenhouse gases come from?

This chart from the United Nations Environment Programme (click to embiggen) looks complicated, sort of like a traffic sign cross-bred with a banyan tree. But it basically just traces the path of greenhouse gases from polluting industries, through uses, out into the atmosphere. So you can tell at a glance, for instance, that energy industries […]

Study: Earth losing its climate change defenses

Like your body, the planet can heal itself a little bit. Some places, like forests and oceans, are carbon sinks -- they absorb carbon from the atmosphere, slowing down the rate at which everything goes to hell. But climate change is no papercut, and as it gets worse, it’s actually breaking the planet’s immune system. Two new studies in Nature argue that two types of carbon sinks -- oceans and soil -- are becoming less effective as climate change advances.

Trash trucks powered by trash gas reduce emissions by 80-90 percent

Waste Management Inc. owns 1,000 trash trucks that run on natural gas, plus a bunch of landfills that are constantly pumping out natural gas as a natural product of the decomposition of organic waste. Closing the loop on this cycle is a no-brainer, but it took Waste Management a decade to perfect the technology required. Now they’ve got trash trucks that run on gas from the trash they carry.

How wallaby farts could save the atmosphere

Scientists have long known that cows are big contributors to global warming. Livestock produce more than a quarter of the world's global methane emissions every year, and 20 percent of methane emissions in the U.S. It's a side effect of ruminant digestion, and aside from strapping your entire herd into carbon-filter diapers, there's no quick fix -- to cut emissions, you have to carefully manage cattle nutrition so they don't offgas as much. Or so we thought. That was before we discovered wallaby farts. 

Too good to be true: biodegradable forks

Methane spoils everything. Natural gas drilling would be less risky if it didn't have the potential to release clouds of methane into the atmosphere. Methane cow farts make even grass-fed beef a less-green option than no beef at all. And now it turns out that those biodegradable plastic utensils we've been telling ourselves are soooo […]